Second Chance
by Juliana Lacerda
Summary: Several months passed by since the last time Tony saw Ziva David. One night, a kind of drunk Tony decides that he would go looking for her once more. Both of them, finnally reunited, but will they be able to forgive and forget everything and be together? It is not a long story, probably two chapters, maximum 3.
1. Chapter 1

Several months had passed by since he saw her for the last time. Since that night,at the airport, when Tony came back to D.C., without bringing with himself his most desired company. Ziva David. Months, and he still couldn't stop thinking about her. Every night, flashbacks kept him staying up all night, and when he could finally sleep he find himself dreaming with the old moments. Tony couldn't take it any longer, he actually thought she would come back, that she only needed some time to think and start again in Israel and then they would be together forever.  
One night, after resolving a case, finding the killer dead, suicide and have drunk a few whisky shots, Tony decided he would go looking for her.  
There weren't so many differences this time from that older search, a year ago, except the fact that now he knew where to find her. Tony booked an immediate flight to Tel Aviv, and left, to see her in the place where she was born.  
He opened the other, to find a woman sitting on the couch, looking to the window of the living room, where you could see and splendid view of the garden, now with trees filled with beautiful flowers.

"You look more rested." He said.

Ziva lightly turned her body, recognizing the voice but not truly believing. He was right there, in front of her. Ziva also never stopped thinking about him, she remembered every moments, and even trying to forget, trying to get rid of the anguishing pain that was not being home, not being with her family. She didn't forget about Abby, McGee, Ducky, Jimmy and Gibbs.  
"Hello."  
"Hi" he said, not knowing how to start a conversation after all that time, without sounding uncomfortable between 'old friends'.  
"Why are you here?"  
"Couldn't live without you, I guess" Tony said it with a light smile appearing in his tired face.  
"So it's the same old cliche, I guess"

In that instant there was a silence. One looked into each others' eyes, reminiscing sweet memories, like Paris, Berlin, and that same house a year before. They all brought so many smiles and so much joy for both, but made it ten times worse when it was time to say goodbye, and to break even more a already broken heart.

Later, Ziva asked Tony why he was there, once more, to see what was the real reason he flied across the world to find her. The last time was because she asked for company, and the time begore because he wanted to avenge her supposed death while she was being held hostage in Somalia.

He looked at her, but before he could answer the kettle whistled. Perfect timing, they both thought.  
After coffee and a little bit of tv, Tony showed her a piece of paper. She stared at him, confused.

"Tony, this is a blank paper. Why are you showing it to me?"  
"This is my 'I Will' list. I promised to myself after I left that airport that i would write one down and it would become true." She tried to say something but he kept going. "However, when I got home I could not. I kept looking at this damn paper to see if I could find something that I want, something that I wish, but I choked."  
"And why did that happen, Tony?" The last word came out of her mouth in a cold way, not getting where he was going with all that talking.  
"You. I wasn't lying earlier, you know? I just could not live without you. I could not work without you,Ziva. For several weeks it was only me, McGee and Gibbs, no Mossad liaison officer, no special agent David, no 'wrongly said' expressions. Nothing. It tortured me for weeks. For weeks."  
In those last few phrases repressed anger from that past year started to show up, and Ziva, by the way her face was, would start getting in defensive (even though there were tears in her eyes).  
"Oh, and you think it was easy for me? I stood here by my self, Tony. I could not go back to being what I was but I could not get that leaving my life there would also mean I had to leave everything and everyone I loved!"  
"But that was your choice! You were the one in charge of it!"  
"That was my choice, yes. But everyday that passed by I thought about going back there. And then I remembered about Ari, about Tali, and everyone else that I loved, and how much they hurt. And then about Gibbs. The closest thing I had to a father, to a family and I haven't been speaking to him for weeks. So don't start lecturing me cause I know my choices and I know my reasons."  
That being said she left the room with authority, wondering if Tony had seen the tears that were fulfilling her eyes.  
DiNozzo was sitting in that couch, speechless. He had never thought about her point of view, and in a selfish way wanted that it would all come back to what there was before they quit NCIS. Tony slept there, in the living room, even though the spare room with an actual bed was offered to him earlier that day, before all the screaming that happened.

When Ziva woke up she did not find Tony inside the house, and thought that he must have left her without even saying goodbye. A part of her wanted him to be gone so she could be in peace and finally try to forget about him, but the other part wished he stayed with her for a few more days, at least.

A couple of hours later, she was walking by her garden and saw a shadow digging a hole in the ground not thar far away from where she was standing. She ran over there, as cautious as she could be and found Tony there.

He turned his head and said:  
"This is the place, you know? A year ago, we were standing in this spot burying your 'I Wish' list."  
"And why are you here again?"  
"Last night" he said, apparently choosing his word wisely "couldn't sleep so I finished mine. Amd thought to myself that there would be no better place to bury it than with yours. However when I got here I could not find it."  
"Yeah, I took it from there four days ago."  
"Why? Why would you?" He asked, not understanding the reasons Ziva did that after burying.  
"All those things written would not come true…all I really wanted I was and still am not able to make them come back."

He looked at her in her beautiful big brown eyes, trying to read her thoughts.  
"You wanted Tali back."  
"Yeah, but just like I said to my father, my sins are too great."  
"Too great for what?"  
"Forgiveness"

Thay being said, in a smooth voice, they both gone separate ways, Ziva going for a walk and Tony back to the house.

She walked until she found the swing, sat there quietly, watching the clouds go by so fast in a turquoise blue sky like it was that morning. Ziva was reminiscing her childhood, with her father, Tali, and all the others she loved that were not there anymore. It hurted more than she could have imagined as a kid, more than she could admit,to herself and to others.  
Gibbs knew all of that. After Tony left, a year before she called his cellphone, begged him not to answer, so she would not have to say goodbye, and just when it was going to voicemail he picked up "Hey Ziver" he said. Leroy Jethro Gibbs, was like always, a great listener and acted just like a father, reading in her mind that that was all she needed in certain occasions. A father. Unfortunately, she wanted more, she needed more. She wanted to move on, let go and start all over. Rewind the past, something that cannot be done very easily. However, in her circumstances, she was willing to give it a try.

Tony, on the other hand, kept imagining what he would do on the next day. He had no plane ticket to return to D.C., and wasn't sure if the Marine Corps would give him a ride home. And worst of all, he didn't know how many more days he would be "welcome" in that house. In Ziva's life. Then, exhausted he turned the tv on and while watching some comedy show in hebrew, fell asleep on the couch.  
Ziva spent her whole afternoon in that old swing, until the sunset behind the cliffs and mountains.

At night, Tony surprised Ziva with a special italian cuisine dinner, "original recipe from the DiNozzo family, I hope you liked it".  
"I did."  
They stared into each others' eyes, invisible flames burning between. Seconds passed by, and not a whisper was heard, his head got closer to hers, their lips almost touching. But like O said before, it was all quiet. Maybe too quiet.  
Booom. The window broke down as a bullet flied to hit their target. Someone was outside, in her garden, in her house, and that person tried to kill her. Or kill Tony. For millimeters she didn't get shot. Ziva's Mossad impulses came back in matter of a blink of an eye, she grabbed her gun (not kept with her any longer, but in a little box at the coffee table) and ran into the darkness of the night to find that shooter. Ziva didn't look back at any instant, that's why she could not see Tony bleeding.

Tony was shot in his stomach area, in the left side. If only he had seen it, if only he was more on the right side of the room, "if only" he thought "I had kissed her first."

DiNozzo wasn't thinking he would die in that moment, the bullet wasn't in somewhere important , he liked to think that could have been worse. But the pain. It was suffocating. Each second it was harder to breath, and each other second it was harder to get strength.  
Ziva came back a few minutes after she left. She had chase the guy down and in the dark she pullet the trigger, in a flawless aim just like the 'good-ol-days'.

The woman entered the room to find Tony laying on the ground, bleeding. The was paralyzed for a few seconds. This. That scene, it all looked too familiar. Michael Rivkin, she remembered, her old boyfriend.

A scream echoed around the room, making Ziva's mind come back to reality. She called 911, but it would take too long until the ambulance arrived. She grabbed some towels and held them tight to his body, also cleaning it up a little bit. It took 20 minutes to the ambulance to arrive. The longest twenty minutes of her life. Seeing Tony like that was difficult. In a matter of seconds paramedics arrived, one of them pushing Ziva away from Tony.

"Let me stay with him!" She yelled in hebrew, but the paramedics acted like she wasn't even there. It was all a big mess, a dozen of paramedics were there, instead of three of four. They knew it was the former place where Eli David lived.  
"Will he be ok? Is he going to make it?" She yelled, still waiting for an answer.  
"You have to come with us, David. We do not know anything in this moment." One of them said quietly.  
And so she did.


	2. Chapter 2

Tony woke up in a hospital bed. A young woman by his side, looking quite worried, and her tired eyes showed deep exhaustion, but DiNozzo didn't know the reason why. His vision was a little blurred so he couldn't recognize the woman's face at first.

"Tony, are you ok?" She asked, with an unmistakable voice.

"Ziva?"

"Yes, Tony. How are you feeling?"

"I'm fine, I guess"

"I'm glad, I'll call the doctor" She kissed his forehead and left the room, slowly. He remembered her with that same outfit a few hours before, at her garden, but everything after was blacked out.

Ziva returned a few minutes later, with a man wearing a white coat, "probably my doctor" he thought. And he was.

The guy did a simple but complete check up on Tony, and left Ziva alone with him.

"Ziva, what happenned? I can't remember anything."

"Ok" she spoke slowly " two days ago"

"Wait? What? Two days ago?" He interrupted her.

"Yeah Tony, after the surgery you stayed in coma for almost two complete days. But returning to that night, you cooked us a italian dinner, there was a gunshot, I ran to catch the guy and when i came back you were bleeding on the ground..."

Those last few words vanished in the air in a matter of instants.

"Well, and did you?" Tony smiled a little bit.

"Did what?"

"Catch the bad guy?"

"Yes. Shot him in the chest." Her eyes turned lifeless. But who could judge her? She left everything she loved and cared about to start over, which she did for a year, just to kill another man without a second thought.

Ziva stayed with Tony in that grey bedroom for the next three days he spent there, before returning home. Between those days they bonded, returned to the state of being normal friends talking about almost normal things -it included some old cases of special agents and top-secret missions.

When they got home, Ziva immediatly connected FaceTime with Abby's lab.

The happy goth picked up instantaneously and was super excited to see that Tony was ok, she called Gibbs, McGee, Ducky, Jimmy and even Director Vance to come there to see how Tony was doing. Impressively, all of them showed up and started talking to Tony, Ziva was kind of hiding of the camera, she didn't want to do it all over again, say goodbye, specially since she still had no idea if she would ever go back.

"Where's Ziva?" Abby asked, in a childish way.

Tony looked at her and read her mind.

"She went grocery shopping, all fruits look really weird." He answered, smiling. But he wasn't lying, the fruits looked rotten, maybe it was just to show off. "Ziva doesn't have so many guests to show something off to" he thought, and took that idea out of his mind.

In the last minutes of the conversation Ziva started to feel uncomfortable, she wanted so badly to say hello to them. Shortly after they hang up, she called Gibbs, and the talked briefly, he said "you sound exhausted, go get some rest". Some people would find his imposition a bit bossy and rude but she didn't, she understood. They said goodbye and Ziva went to take a shower, put her pajamas and lay in her bed. Tony did the same thing but entering hers.

By the mirror reflection he could see she was getting ready to sleep, putting a comfortable large t-shirt and mini shorts. Tony fake-coughed, attempting to call Ziva's attention.

"Do you need anything? I can get you extra pillows if you prefer." Ziva's been spoiling Tony all day long.

"No, I've already got two, it's fine. I just came here to say goodnight."

"Goodnight Tony"

DiNozzo was almost leaving when he turned around and said:

"I lied for you before, but why couldn't you say hi, at least?"

"And I thought we already talked about it few days ago."

"Well, he we go again then"

Ziva took a deep breath, "I think, that if I see their faces, if I personally say hello I wouldn't be able to say goodbye."

"Yet, here I am. Are you able to say goodbye to me" he paused "again, Ziva?"

She never thought she would be asked a question like that. So simple and so rough at the same time. Ziva tried to leave the room, Tony held her arm, stopping that from happening. He leaned his head, each second, closer to hers. When their lips finally touched each other, in a such passionate way, just like that one, at the airport, expressing love and affection, and also desire.

It felt magical for them. It was the kiss they have been waiting for a long time. 9 years, to be exact. After all, there was always an undeniable sexual tension between them, and over the years it also became deep care for the other and a good friendship.

Ziva and Tony didn't know how much time that kiss lasted. It seemed "forever" and "not enough", at the same time. After it was done, she looked at his hazel eyes (according to his NCIS' ID, Ziva always thought they were some kind of greenish blue, but never mentioned anything, "it will seem that I am paying too much attention to his eyes" she thought) and said:

"I was afraid that this would happen since the moment you entered by that door, yet here we are."

"Here we are" he repeated. "However I was waiting for it." A charming smile appeared in his face, he kisses her once more and said goodnight, leaving her bedroom and going to sleep.

Ziva was already awake when Tony woke up.

"I forgot that you left bed even before the sunrised. Have you had breakfast yet?"

"No, I was waiting for a certain person..."

"Let's have pancakes! I'm dying for an all-american meal for a change."

Ziva gave him a look "You should not use that expression when you almost died, literally, a few days back"

"I'm sorry, sweetcheeks. Won't do it another time." Both of them smiled, that nickname wasn't used for years, and they remembered their time in Paris, the "Undercover Paris".

It was a weird time for Ziva, and for Tony. Tony had just lost Kate, and Ziva had shot her own brother to protect Gibbs and at that time worked with new people she barely knew.

During the rest of the day, nothing special happened, they watched tv, planted a tree to replace that had fallen down with the wind, had lunch, and Tony begged her to go sight-seeing in Tel Aviv. Ziva denied at the beginning, but gave in a few minutes later.

He woke up, next day already, and checked his cellphone. 17 missed calls. 22 texts from Abby and McGee. Tony's face turned pale. He thought "oh my god, something terrible must have happenned, is everyone ok? What do I do?". Tony opened the messages and while reading them, a relief feeling ran all over his body. No one had died.

One of the texts McGee wrote was like that:

*hey tony, you're not answering your cell and i couldn't facetime ziva's laptop. U need to come home. Director Vance said that HR is not happy with you 'wild leaving' and he cannot keep them hangin' any longer. BTW, we got a new case, probably serial killer, call!*

After his shower Tony started looking for Ziva, he found her at the swing. He sat in the one next to hers and said

"I think I have to go back to D.C."

"I know." Ziva answered, not looking at him in the eyes, standing emotionless still, "I saw that McGee tried to facetime my laptop and figured something must be wrong"

"Why didn't you wake me up?"

"I was going to, but you looked so peaceful Tony, I didn't want to disturb" Her lips opened in a light smile, now looking at him directly. "Gibbs faxed me this." Giving him a small envelope.

"Fax?"

"Old fashioned, I know. That's Gibbs"

He opened, just to see a plane ticket to return to D.C.

"It's for tonight." He said, not knowing very well how to react.

"I know."

"What do we do now?"

"We wait." She said, leaning on him for a kiss.

They sat there, in silence, the small breeze refreshing their heads. Flitting through Ziva's hair.

Tony reluctantly packed his bags - his small suitcase and one backpack - and got ready to go. Ziva drove him to the airport, just like the time before.

"I'm going to miss your driving, you know...?" Tony said, causing her to smile. Damn, Tony was going to miss that smile. And the look in her eyes, most of the times, the others there's an assassin look which he hated when it is directed to the 'Very Special Agent Tony DiNozzo'.

Ziva kept quiet during the whole way 'til the airport.

"I asked you earlier if you were able to say goodbye to me, once more. And you did not respond."

"Yes?"

"I'd like you to say it now."

"Tony, you know I..." She began to explain but he interrupted her, both voices softly in the darkness of that cloudy night.

"Ziva David, if this was a movie there would be no talking, if it was a tv show you would come with me, if this was a novel" he sighed "the readers would be drowning in tears, just because their 'OTP' didn't get to have a happy ending" he smiled once more while saying OTP, making the sigh of inverted commas with his hands.

"Do you really consider us an OTP, Tony?"

"Yes, and so does Abby."

"Maybe, a few years from now, something might happen. A happy ending might still come for us, maybe." There were some tears in her eyes, specially when she affirmed: "but not now, Tony. I cannot afford that luxury."

"I understand", he whispered, leaning on her to kiss her. Passionately, savagely, and affectedly. It was breathtaking, leaving both of them in the end gasping for air.

They heard a feminine voice in the machine: "Last call for the flight 120. Last call for the flight 120"

"I've got to go." He kissed for the last time and went. On the way, he turned his head around and saw Ziva crying, standing there, and said:

"I was wrong, this was the hardest 180 of my life". After his words vanished in the air, Tony got on the plane and the doors closed, for good.

DiNozzo was feeling sick all the way home. Not from an illness, but from a heartbreak. He was thinking to himself "How could you be such a fool? Did you actually believed there was even the smallest possibility she would come back with you? For you?".

Tony truly did, he was expecting her to change her mind in the last second. Unfortunately, she didn't. That was going to be a long flight. He was exhausted but had to wait 5 hours in the JFK airport as a flight connection. He hated stops.

Abby was supposed to go pick him up at the airport, but when his phone started working again, already in the D.C. soil, he saw the text message:

*Tony, can you catch a taxi or something? Gibbs won't let me get out of here. Case is has no suspects and we're running out of time. Hope you had a great flight ;D See u soon! *

Almost passing out of tiredness, he got home left his keys on the balcony, and sat at his couch.

"Tony," he heard a voice calling his name. No, it couldn't be her. How could it be? She's still in Israel, my mind is playing tricks with my heart. Those were his thoughts at that time.

"Tony, is that you?" He heard it again. DiNozzo opened his eyes and turned around, staring at his bedroom's door.

Just to find Ziva, standing right in front of him. His eyes, started glowing, of happiness but also confusion. He rushed to give her a hug.

"What happened? Why are you here Ziva?"

"Now, Tony, it is I who can't live without you."

"I love you Ziva David."

"I love you too Tony."

They've kissed, like it was the very first and last time. Their heartbeats were synchronized, just as it was supposed to be.

"What will you do then?" He asked her.

"This is one of the few times I had no plan B. Maybe be a ballerina. Who knows?" She told him, smiling like never before.

"I just have one question. How could you have arrived earlier than i did?"

"I left a minute after you entered that airplane. I'm still a former Mossad's special agent and I'm still the daughter of Eli David. I have my contacts."

"Yes, yes you do." Tony put his arms around her waist, pulling her in for another kiss, another magical kiss.

Both of them were thinking the same thing.

"God, how I wished I have done this eight years ago..."

I guess this is it, a happy ending for us all (since we didn't get it on the tv show)! I hope you have enjoyed it, please review, and those other things! Thank you!


End file.
